


Heortwærc

by MercuryGray



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Gen, Heartache, Lost Love, Missing Scene, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 02:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15133343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: The dwarves have finally reclaimed Erebor from the dragon, and the treasures of the kingdom are theirs for the taking. Some look for weapons, and some for jewels - but Thorin is searching for something else, and his youngest nephew decides he needs to know what it is. A missing scene for the movies.





	Heortwærc

**Author's Note:**

> Heortwærc: Old English, lit. heart-pain. A feeling of loss, heartache.

 

It was like stepping into a memory.

 

Not his memory, of course; Kili had not even been a twinkle in his mother's eye when she had fled from Erebor. But there had been enough stories told by the fireside in the Ered Luin for him to feel as though he knew the kingdom of his grandfathers as his own.

 

The dragon had left these rooms alone - high above the vaulted halls of the king, there were no gold or gems here to interest him, so they had sat, for all these years, as though their owners had just left, the debris of a life suddenly upended slowly gathering dust.

 

The departure of the dragon had brought a strange joy to the company - and suddenly eleven dwarves that Kili had always known as guarded, careful creatures turned into riotous youths again, caught up in the remembered glories of a old life.

 

Dwalin and Gloin carried Kili away to the armory, each one trying to outdo themselves in raptures over their discovered treasures, while Dori could be seen pouring over the King's library, his brother Ori (himself too young to remember Erebor) drinking in his elder brother's stories about the riches contained therein.

 

But Thorin had not looked for weapons, or books, or even for the Arkenstone. In his first quiet moments, Thorin had left the rest of the company behind, and climbed the stairs, his departure unnoticed except by his younger nephew.

 

And Kili, curious, followed.

 

His presence did not stay a secret for long - catching his hand on a tapestry to run his hands along the weave, the last threads holding it up gave way, and the thing collapsed to the floor with a dusty thump. Thorin turned, his expression unreadable. His frown lightened a little when he saw who it was, and he gestured with his head for Kili to follow him.

 

He matched his uncle's steps full of curiosity, watching, fascinated, as Thorin uncovered bits of his former life - the doors opened with a sure hand, the quiet changes of his expression as he remembered some space or another, telling Kili that this had been a council chamber, and this for the storage of clothes, this room for the seamstresses and this for the reception of guests. Further and further back into the palace they went, the patterns of the stones in the floor changing as they went, inlaid carpets of lapis and quartz that still dazzled the eye. Some doors he would not open, while others he would not name. Finally, he stopped before one and reverently laid his hand upon it. "This was your mother's room," he said, finally, opening it and stepping inside. Kili followed, spellbound.

 

It was the room of a child - a doll strewn on the floor, half-sized swords and bows tossed from their trunk, waiting to be played with again. A rainbow of robes thrown to the ground as a dwarfling decided what to wear that day. Kili picked one of the swords up, recognizing the pattern from one of his own playthings. She couldn't give him her own, left in Erebor, so she'd remade them, as she remembered them. Curtains hung limply at rock crystal windows, the first such he'd seen in the palace. He tried the handle, and found, to his surprise, that it opened, albeit with a mighty screech. His uncle smiled. "She used to feed the thrushes," Thorin offered, looking at the panes of the window, cloudy now with age and weather. "She learned that from our mother."

 

 _Our mother._ Vardis, daughter of Vardra, wife of Thrain. The grandmother Kili had not known. His father's mother had been a constant in his youth, but he knew nearly nothing about his mother's kin. Thorin never spoke of her, either. She'd died somewhere in Dunland, buried in what to a dwarf would seem a pauper's grave, a once-mighty queen without a tomb. Kili wondered why he didn't remember his mother feeding the birds in the Ered Luin. "She stopped doing it, in Dunland," his uncle said, answering his un-asked question. "She left food out for the ravens, and a flock of crebain came instead. Our father gave her such a scolding," he remembered. "She never tried to feed the birds again, even when Idunn -"

 

Thorin stopped, what was left of his smile leaving his face. Kili waited, but Thorin offered nothing further, leaving his nephew wondering who this Idunn was, and who she had been to his mother - and, come to that, who she had been to his uncle. Thorin's hand lingered for a moment on a piece of sewing, left on a table, a belt for some unknown garment, his fingers reverent. Was that a tear Kili saw in his uncle's eye? No sooner was it seen than it was gone again, and Thorin was leaving. Kili tried his best to follow quickly, but his curiosity won, and the half-finished belt was shoved into his tunic, the needle pricking his hand as he did so, as though the needlewoman herself were chiding him for mistreating her work.

 

 _Balin will know_ , he thought to himself. _Balin knows everything._

 

Balin, as it happened, was neither in the king's hall marveling at the mounds of treasure, nor the storehouse tutting over spilled grain or mis-shelved provisions.

 

No, Balin was on the rampart, looking out over the plain, lost in his own thoughts. Kili cleared his throat, and the graybearded dwarf looked up, smiling for the youngest member of the company to come and join him. "Did you enjoy seeing the city with your uncle?" he asked. So someone _had_ noticed the two of them leaving.

 

"It was...instructive," Kili said carefully. He withdrew the belt from his tunic and threaded it through his hands, careful this time to avoid the needle. The gilt threads glimmered dimly in the sunlight, showing their tarnish. "He showed me my mother's room." Should he ask? Was it his place to? Or was his uncle allowed some secrets? "Balin, who was Idunn?"

 

Balin sounded surprised to hear the name. "What did he tell you?"

 

"Nothing," Kili admitted. "She was...my mother's nursemaid. I think." _What she was to Uncle I do not know._

 

"Not quite old enough to be her nursemaid! She was only a few years older than Dis.  Her companion," the older dwarf corrected. "Her...lady in waiting, if you like. Your mother would get into trouble and Idunn would take the blame. She had a knack for trouble, your mother," he said with a smile.

 

"Thorin mentioned something about feeding birds."

 

"Yes, he'd remember that, wouldn't he?" Balin mused. "That was in Dunland. Food was scarce, but your mother thought that even stray ravens should eat. Your grandfather was so angry at her - though I don't think it was about the crebain she summoned, mind you. She fed the birds out of love - but all he saw was a waste of food. She never did it again after that. There was a princess, in the Ered Luin, who kept songbirds, and Dis would not feed them, nor stay in the same room where they were kept. She felt that scolding deeply  - and feels it still, I'm sure." Balin sighed, remembering days gone by. "Why did you want to know about Idunn?"

 

"It was only that Uncle..." Kili paused, trying to find words for what he wanted to say. "Uncle said her name, and...and would not say more." _My uncle has no secrets, Balin - but now he has this_ . He offered the older dwarf the belt he'd been carrying, wondering if it held some hidden meaning he could not see. Balin took it with careful hands, his own eyes noting the needle.  "It was in my mother's room." _He touched it like a talisman, and would not speak._

 

The older dwarf took the piece of cloth, his touch just as thoughtful as Thorin’s hand been, tracing the pattern in the gilt thread. "She was a skilled needlewoman, even as a girl," Balin remembered. "Idunn," he clarified, catching Kili's incredulous eye. "Your mother hates sewing, as well you know.  But Mahal blesses each of us with the gift of crafts, and that was hers - the magic of the needle. When we were in the wilds, she learned how to go about sewing flesh, by need, and those wounds she tended would often heal without a scar, such was her skill. She sewed your uncle up often enough,” he added with a wry grin. "Perhaps that was when...ah, but who knows these things. Somewhere between Erebor and the Blue Mountains your uncle did what he should not have, and lost his heart." He smiled at Kili's surprise. "You didn't think him capable of it!"

 

"He's always just so...stern," Kili offered. The idea of his uncle mooning over some dwarf-maid didn't quite make sense, to his way of things.

 

"As you might be, perhaps, if you had lost your love." Balin's smile turned sad. "They could not marry - he was a prince in need of an army, and she was not a princess who could give him one. They carried on, as best they could, in secret, but they always knew there would come a time when Thorin would have to wed another."

 

"But Uncle has no wife," Kili supplied. _And I have never heard the name Idunn spoken, by my uncle or my mother._

 

"He delayed, as long as he could - the time was not right, he would say, to re-take the Lonely Mountain. And there were plenty who would wait. And in the waiting…” Balin paused, his own expression sad. “The goblins came. It was summer, and the shadows were long in the trees. Your uncle and your mother were out hunting with their friends, and they were attacked. Goblins are not bright creatures - they saw a dwarf-maid with dark hair, and shot. Idunn took the arrow meant for your mother and died in her arms.”

 

Kili had a sudden image of auburn hair spilled on dead leaves, a green tunic stained with red, and felt his heart run cold. “And Uncle?” _How does one mourn a secret love?_

 

Balin sighed. “He left the Blue Mountains for a time - traveled to Bree, and up and down the Kingsroad, taking work where he could get it. He would not have come home were it not for your grandfather’s disappearance. Then he had an excuse - he would not marry in mourning, he said - and he had much to mourn for. A mother, brother, lover gone - and then a father, too. He blamed himself for all of it - that his delay had been their death. The rest I think you know.”

 

That was the uncle Kili remembered from his youth - the distant patriarch who returned from a long journey when Kili was just old enough to remember his mother’s wild joy, his father’s boisterous welcome. A stern man who, when the mood was on him, would take his nephews into the confidence of the feasting-hall and tell them stories of the lost Kingdom of Erebor, and filled their minds with tales of the great heroes of their house, making them grow tall and strong on the mighty deeds of their grandfathers. That was the uncle that Kili had idolized as a child, always wanting to be more like him, going off on adventures and coming home with tales of strange peoples and far-away lands.

 

But always alone. Even here, in the close company of twelve fellow travelers, his uncle still kept his own council, watching the rest of the dwarves as they ate and showed to Bilbo all the wonderful things they’d found that day. Even after all this time, Thorin was still alone. Was that any way to spend a life?

 

“Something on your mind?” his brother asked him, sitting down noisily next to him with a bowl of stew in his hands.

 

“Heartache,” Kili said, and would not tell his brother what he meant.

  


**Author's Note:**

> I have wanted to write this story for a long, long time. In fact, I nearly did it after the Hobbit movies came out, but the prevailing fashion was against me at the time, so Idunn became a footnote in my larger Lord of the Rings Fic A Rose Among The Briars, a character in a story Gimli tells by a fireside. 
> 
> I rewatched the Hobbit movies recently and decided to give this another go - the idea, incidentally, is not mine. Richard Armitage mentioned in several interviews that he did a little bit of fannish writing himself to get into Thorin's character, and in at least one piece mentioned this idea he had that Thorin had a lover, who, for whatever reason, was somehow lost before the quest started. To my mind it always had to be Kili who revealed this to the audience. In addition to being the youngest, a trait that makes him curious and a dreamer, he, too, has fallen in love with an unsuitable woman - though unsuitable for much different reasons.


End file.
